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Friday, April 04, 2008

MANILA TEENS' PENCHANT FOR ALCOHOL

With school out for the summer, many students suddenly find themselves with too much time on their hands but without much productive activities to engage in. Regrettably, for some, binge drinking has become the pastime of choice.

What makes such conundrum somewhat insoluble is the local attitude that equates alcohol drinking with masculine pride.

Many local boys as young as 13 and 14 are allowed by their parents to participate in drinking sessions during birthday celebrations or anything as mundane as winning a neighborhood basketball game. Unfortunately, most of these parents tend to forget that alcohol consumption by young people exposes them to greater health risks; among which are the adverse effects of alcohol on the brain, liver and kidney.

Only recently, a team from Northumbria and Keele universities told the British Psychological Society that teenagers who engage in binge drinking could result to absent-mindedness and forgetfulness days later.

According to a BBC article, Dr Thomas Heffernan, from the University of Northumbria and who led the study, said: "We found no differences between binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers in the self-reporting questionnaires, but when it came to the video the binge drinkers recalled significantly less than the non-binge drinkers."

And this may be one of the more significant reasons why some high school-age binge drinkers oftentimes fall behind their studies and eventually drop out of school altogether.

25 Comments:

This yellow colored house lends cheer to this otherwise usual drab neighborhood. Hope more Pinoys color their houses like so!

Drinking alchohol is rampant here in the province. I thought is was purely a male pasttime but I just recently found out that the women (young and old)also pursue it like anything! Like smoking, it is a peer pressure induced habit. Our wards would tell me about it and the only advise I can give them is "just observe how these people will make of their lives and that's because of what they do."

My father used to be very strict w/me when I was in high school. He never allowed me to take a single sip of lager or wine when I was younger b/c of the adverse effects on the brain, liver and kidney. However, he's fine if I do consume alcohol once in a while now as I'm already of the legal age.

But it's true that kids these days are binging on alcohol --- too much in fact.

Since my daughter is a hospitality management student, she has to taste all kinds of alcoholic drinks. But of course this is done under the supervision of the professor. And I have made it clear with her: she can drink alcoholic beverages only in her Beverage class.

I think I'm just lucky that my boys are not hard or habitual drinkers. One or two bottles of beer on rare occasions, yes. I laugh whenever I recall that time when my eldest son was entertaining 'barkada' at home. Of course, there was drinking. Then he came in the kitchen. "O lasing ka na yata," I asked. He said he was not drinking and then proceeded to get himself a glass of milk. LOL!

Having one drink too many can lead to many possibilities - often things one won't be proud of when sober, and the one that parents dread most - casual sex.

Yes, Bernadette, the boys I've spoken to boasted of female friends who, like, themselves, had gotten to enjoy drinking alcohol on a regular basis. This activity, they admit, do lead to sexual promiscuity once under the influence.

The brightly painted house was and the hanging laundry grabbed my attention when I was walking along this street. It reminded me of the tropical colors used by residents of Puerto Rico to paint their abodes.

Eric, the former school where I worked had beer joints surrounding the campus. When the administrators and I looked for a way to have these beer joints closed (they seemed to have sprouted and multiplied overnight!), we were dismayed with the red tape we encountered. When we went to the city hall, they told us to go to the barangay captain. After waiting so long for the barangay captain to find "a convenient time" to talk to us (would you believe he had an appointments secretary?), this is what he told us: "It's easier to open a beer joint than to close it."

I once told an older woman that smoking and binge drinking is slow suicide...she told me I should stop eating too because when I ate too much I'll blow myself! Talk about logic! Might be the effect of those 2 unnecessary habits tsk tsk!

As it turns out, Bugsy, the side streets of the university belt area here in Manila also has a number of watering holes that students frequent. A teacher at at nearby parochial high school told me of the problems they're having with some of their high school students who enjoy hanging out at some of these places.

They've also gone to the barangay to complain but it lacks the necessary manpower to police these places.

Studies show that the younger people start with drugs or alcohol, the more susceptible they become to chronic drug addiction and alcoholism in their later years. These kids and their parents ought to wake up before serious physical and psychological harm come to such kids. Such is the problem with ignorance.

Binge drinking has been common nowadays in the youth. Sadly for them, they think of alcohol as a way to relax themselves during the hot summer. This is not a good thing because we know for a fact that alcohol is not good for the health.

Life in Manila as observed by a former New Yorker who with a laptop and camera has reinvented himself as a storyteller. Winner of the PHILIPPINE BLOG AWARDS: Best Photo Blog in 2007 and three Best Single Post awards in 2008.